Headlines
Appeal Court Takes Decision On Oshiomhole’s Removal As APC Chairman
The appeal court has taken a decision on Adams Oshiomhole‘s removal as APC Chairman.
NewsOne Nigeria reports that the Court of Appeal has postponed the hearing on the application filed by the embattled National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, challenging his suspension by the high court.
This burgeoning online news platform understands that Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, had arrived at the court in company with a former governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, among others, for the hearing.
NewsOne Nigeria reports that a panel of three Justices led by Justice Stephen Adah had been scheduled to hear the case today Monday, March 16, 2020, but an official of the court announced to those attending the scheduled hearing that the court had decided to postpone Oshiomhole’s appeal to a date that would be communicated to the parties involved later.
Meanwhile, this is coming barely 24 hours after the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nigeria’s ruling party, Bola Tinubu kicked against Oshiomhole’s removal.
Faulting the moves in a statement he personally signed on Sunday afternoon, Tinubu, a former Governor of Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial city, said those behind them are infected by “the 2023 virus”.
Tinubu said: “While Corona has been presently contained in Nigeria, we must be alert to another sickness that seems rampant within a certain segment of society. That sickness is old Ambition-virus 2023. This illness afflicts many in the political class along with their allies in the media.
“Those touched by this malady find that their ability to tell time and discern the difference between the present and the future has been strongly impaired. The carriers of this sickness are confused as to the very season our nation now finds itself.
“They conflate things, which no sensible person would conflate. The primary symptom of their malady is the driving tendency to believe the events of 2023 will be decided before we even exit the year 2020.
“Consequently, everything they say and do is geared toward obsessive jockeying for position to control and manipulate a race still three years away. In doing so, they recklessly undermine the very party which they claim to serve and weaken the administration of President Buhari to which they claim to be loyal. They line up to run a race for which the track has not even yet been constructed.
“Put another way, they seek to pluck the fruit before the seed is even planted. As such, their actions border on the pathological. True, ambition is inherent in human endeavour. Without it, nothing great is achieved. However, strong ambition applied in the wrong way has never done anything positive.
APC leaders unveil Oshiomhole’s replacement
“At best, it results in confusion. Usually, its results in something worse. No matter how great one’s ambition and how able one may be, nobody can rush or speed time. That is beyond the realm of human capacity. To do so is to contest against fate itself. When it ends, such a contest rarely ends well.
“In a well-structured society, people come to understand that the time for politics is seasonal; it is periodic. The responsibilities of governance are what is perpetual. Many of our politicians sadly have inverted this reality. Politics and electioneering are secondary to governance for they are but tools of governance, the platforms by which one demonstrates his or her worthiness to lead a great people.
“The more a person obsesses over and constantly engages in political manoeuvring is a warning sign. Not only is he prone to the 2023 virus. He likely has little to offer in the way of good governance. He wants to hold public office that you might serve him not he serve you.
“For if he had adequately studied and been acquainted with the ways and means of progressive governance, he would be focused on that important task at the present moment. He certainly would not drown himself and all around him in harmful political intrigue.”
Stating that Oshiomhole has worked tirelessly for the APC, Tinubu continued: “The plotters launched their attack solely because they perceive the chairman as an obstacle to their 2023 ambitions. People went to court knowing full well the party constitution prohibits such action because these people had not yet exhausted all internal disciplinary procedures.
“We even had a national deputy secretary improperly call for a NEC meeting on the basis that he believed himself the acting national chairman. Clearly, this man would not have summoned the temerity to make such a move had he not been instigated by powerful individuals who he thought would reward or, at least, protect him for committing the wrongful act.
“Those engaged in these manoeuvres see themselves as clever or cunning. They do so because they only understand the mean craft of political intrigue. They have yet to understand the value and long-term utility of democratic governance. Thus, they embark on the strangest of quest. They would rather dismantle and weaken the institutional core of their party just to gain control of that weakened edifice in order to pilfer the party nomination, which they crave. This is more than sad.
“Many of us expended sweat, tears, toil and sleepless nights to build this party. Our personal sacrifices were not insignificant. We built this party not simply as a vehicle for personal ambition. We built the party because we saw it as perhaps the only enduring hope to bring progressive governance to this nation. Those who now seek to abuse the party by using it as their personal device do it great harm.
“They should not be allowed to sacrifice this collective enterprise at the altar of their self-aggrandizement. Somehow, someway they should find in themselves the bearing to adhere to the democratic spirit on which the party was founded. To be an APC member means more than merely carrying a membership card. It means to believe in a set of ideals and principles geared to our highest purpose as a party and a nation.”
